Chapter 17
Thomas raised the rod.
Noah hit him from the side.
They went down hard.
The rod skidded across the turf.
Jake ran.
A hunter in the volunteer vest intercepted him.
Jake moved before thinking.
He ducked.
Turned.
Caught the man’s wrist.
Too fast.
Far too strong.
The hunter’s eyes widened.
Jake shoved him away.
The man flew six feet and landed on his back.
Jake stared at his own hands.
“Okay.”
Not the time.
The crack in the field widened.
Cold air poured from it.
Not winter cold.
Underground cold.
Old cold.
Voices rose with it.
Jake heard his father.
Daniel.
Not Robert.
A man he had never met calling his name as if he had been waiting eighteen years to say it.
Jake.
He turned toward the opening.
Sofia appeared in front of him.
“Don’t listen.”
“That’s him.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
Jake hated her for being right.
Behind Sofia, Elena and Marcus were helping people over a collapsed section of railing.
Lisa was shouting at parents to move toward the south exit.
Robert had grabbed a terrified freshman by the shoulders and was guiding him off the field.
Everyone was doing something.
Jake forced himself to do the same.
Noah fought Thomas near the sideline.
Not as a wolf.
As himself.
Thomas struck him across the ribs with the silver rod.
Noah screamed.
Jake heard it.
The world disappeared.
Pain tore through Jake’s spine.
He fell.
Someone shouted his name.
His shoulder broke.
No.
Changed.
Bones moved.
Muscle pulled.
His uniform tore.
Jake screamed until the scream became something else.
A howl ripped across the stadium.
For one impossible second, everyone stopped.
Jake stood on four legs.
The world was enormous.
Bright.
Loud.
Every scent had shape.
Every heartbeat had distance.
He smelled Noah’s blood.
Thomas’s fear.
His mother’s tears.
The worked silver beneath the bleachers.
And something below the field that smelled like wet stone, old smoke, and death.
Jake looked down at himself.
Paws.
Dark fur.
This was inconvenient.
Noah stared at him.
Even injured, he smiled.
“Jake?”
Jake tried to answer.
A bark came out.
Marcus, twenty feet away, shouted, “THAT IS SO COOL.”
Jake growled.
Marcus pointed.
“Sorry.”
Thomas backed away.
Not from Noah.
From Jake.
“You shouldn’t exist.”
Jake bared his teeth.
Thomas lifted the rod.
Noah grabbed it.
Silver burned his palms.
He held on anyway.
“Jake!”
Jake ran.
He hit Thomas square in the chest.
They rolled.
Jake smelled silver.
He twisted away before the rod struck him.
Thomas scrambled backward.
“You don’t know what you are.”
Jake snarled.
“No one does,” Noah said, staggering toward them. “We’re all getting comfortable with it.”
Thomas swung.
Noah ducked.
Jake lunged.
Thomas dropped the rod.
Sofia kicked it through the crack in the field.
Everyone stared at her.
“What?” she said. “It seemed useful.”
The rod fell.
Something beneath the earth screamed.
The crack erupted with white light.
Every hunter on the field froze.
Not voluntarily.
Their bodies locked.
The chant stopped.
Jake heard a heartbeat beneath the ground.
One.
Slow.
Massive.
Noah looked at Sofia.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t.”
The earth shook.
Elena shouted, “The threshold is opening!”
Jake’s wolf body reacted before his mind did.
He ran toward the crack.
Noah caught a handful of fur.
Jake nearly dragged him.
“Jake, no!”
The voice beneath the field called again.
Son.
Jake stopped.
Noah’s hand stayed in his fur.
Jake looked down into the light.
A memory hit him.
Not his.
A man in the woods.
Daniel Miller.
Younger than Jake expected.
Bleeding.
A woman beside him—Mara Bennett, Noah’s grandmother.
Hunters surrounding them.
Daniel pressing both hands to a stone.
Mara shouting words Jake could not understand.
A baby.
Someone saying the baby must never know.
Daniel laughing despite blood on his teeth.
Tell Lisa I’m sorry.
Then light.
Then nothing.
Jake came back to himself on the football field.
Noah was kneeling beside him.
Jake was human again.
Also naked.
Of course.
Marcus threw his jacket over him.
“I am not commenting.”
Jake wrapped it around his waist.
“Personal growth.”
“Massive.”
The crack in the field had closed.
Thomas Voss was gone.
So were the other hunters.
The stadium was chaos.
Sirens approached.
Jake looked at Sofia.
“What happened?”
She stared at the place where the threshold had been.
“You remembered.”
“No. The ground remembered.”
Noah went still.
His family gift.
But Jake had done it.
Elena whispered, “Warden and wolf.”
Jake looked at Noah.
Noah looked back.
Neither needed to say it.
Whatever Jake was becoming, nobody had written rules for it yet.